The Final Conflict

Was Jerry Goldsmith the only person involved who was told the title of this film? His apocalyptic score is at 11 almost the whole time, but everything else about the film’s execution is relatively sedate, which is pretty weird considering the script includes a huge satanist rally in what looks like a volcanic crater, the systematic murder of hundreds of newborn babies, and the literal second coming of Christ. Sam Neill is probably as good as a grown up Damien Thorn gets, but unlike the unassumingly evil child we saw in The Omen and Damien: Omen II, there’s no compelling cognitive dissonance in the idea of the Antichrist as the adult leader of a multinational corporation, even if he does keep a life-sized crucifix in his house purely for the purpose of taunting it.

One thing I was glad to finally see was a doomsday prophet with decent communication skills. Rossano Brazzi’s Father DeCarlo makes a rational case and keeps a tidy dossier conclusively proving that this Damien guy is the son of Satan, unlike the easily dismissed crackpots in the previous films. Less impressive is the dream team of monks he assembles to take Damien down. Their failures, which should have been an escalating series of the franchise’s characteristically colorful death scenes, ultimately do less to make Damien look powerful than to demonstrate the clerical cabal’s own ineptitude.

The titular final conflict is neither final (cf. Omen IV: The Awakening) nor much of a conflict, and the brash proselytism of its abrupt conclusion would feel right at home in a Pure Flix production.